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Townies (1996)

by: ABC

Publication date: 1996
Topics: Comedy, Sitcom, Molly Ringwald, Jenna Elfman, Lauren Graham, Bill Burr, Ron Livingston, Conchata Farrell, Joseph D. Reitman, Lee Garlington, Dion Anderson, Eric McCormack, Heather Matarazzo, Betty Garrett, Nancy Lenehan, Troy Evans, Carsey Werner
Language: English
Item Size: 10.1G

Molly Ringwald, Jenna Elfman and Lauren Graham are 20-somethings who've gotten stuck in their hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts. These seem to have been duped from VHS tapes of Australian broadcasts. Thanks to whomever ripped them.

This short-lived sitcom was supposed to have been Ringwald's big comeback following a string of theatrical flops. It wasn't a big hit, but it also wasn't a flop. It premiered with 15 million viewers and there was a steady uptick in the ratings each week, reaching 8 million -- but then it slightly dipped for two weeks (the day before Thanksgiving, when people were traveling, and the first week of December, where there was often a ratings dip), which was seen as justification for yanking it off the air. It was officially canceled in the spring.

See, the show was greenlit under ABC president Ted Harbert, who was succeeded by NBC president Jamie Tarses. Tarses had a fairly short and tumultuous stint at ABC, and she went out of her way to cancel all of Harbert's new shows, ratings be damned (though Spin City and Sabrina the Teenage Witch had too much buzz to cancel). The rumor at the time was that Tarses especially disliked female-centered shows (like Roseanne, Grace Under Fire & Life's Work), which had been a staple of ABC programming for nearly a decade and were in short supply the next season (there was only Ellen, and it was the show's final season, where she came out as a lesbian). The final 5 episodes of Townies were never broadcast in the USA, and it didn't even return for summer reruns, which was pretty unheard of for a show that was getting strong ratings.

Townies was one of the very first series ever made available for streaming on an experimental Yahoo! platform in 2001. All 15 episodes were available to watch for about a year, but pre-YouTube, the quality of streaming was pretty terrible. Although other Carsey Werner productions were subsequently made available on Netflix, Tubi, and the like, this show's never officially made its way back to the web... which is bizarre considering all of the cast members except for Ringwald later became famous.

I liked the show from the start, but something always felt a little... off. Jenna Elfman and Conchata Farrell consistently stole scenes, but otherwise, it wasn't exactly a laugh riot, which is probably why it was savaged by critics. Rewatching it, I think I've figured out the problem: It's a studio audience sitcom that desperately wanted to be single-camera (something that was barely done at the time). The humor is dry, the bulk of the cast has been more successful in dramadies, and the audience laughter feels more obtrusive than complimentary. Eh, that's just my opinion.

Addeddate: 2023-11-06 01:49:15
Collection_added: vhsvault
Color: color
Identifier: townies.-s-01-e-04-the-mcp
Scanner: Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.7.0
Sound: sound
Year: 1996